The guide defines Supply Chain Finance (SCF) as the use of financial instruments, practices and technologies to optimize the management of the working capital and liquidity tied up in supply chain processes for collaborating business partners. It then goes on to state that SCF is largely ‘event-driven’ and that each intervention (finance, risk mitigation or payment) in the financial supply chain is driven by an event in the physical supply chain.

The EBA then goes on to state that the key categories of SCF are:

Buyer-Centric Accounts Payable
Also known as “Approved Payables Finance”, “Reverse Factoring”, “Supplier Finance”, or even “Confirming”, it’s generally based on discounted payment of accounts payable in favour of suppliers by accessing a financial institution’s liquidity. “Dynamic Discounting” is a related instrument.

Supplier-Centric Accounts Receivable
Also known as “Receivables Finance”, “Receivables Purchase”, and “Invoice Discounting” or “Invoice Factoring”, it’s where a supplier finances their operations by factoring their invoices or taking loans against the receivables.

Inventory-Centric Finance (PO/Inventory Finance)
Which can be used by the supplier to gain financing based on a PO or a buyer to gain financing based on inventory.

Bank Payment Obligation (BPO)
As described in this recent post on how it took 40 years, but BPOs are now truly SWIFT, a URBPO (under ISO20022), provides an irrevocable payment guarantee in an automated environment and enables banks to offer flexible risk mitigation and financing services across the supply chain to their corporate customers. An alternative to L/Cs (Letters of Credit), it is a new middle ground between L/Cs and Open Account finance which can be used to offer pre- and post-shipment finance.

a bank or third party lending the supplier money based on POs, invoices, accounts receivable, or BPOs; or

the buyer paying the supplier early for a discount.

And the primary mechanisms by which a supplier gets financing is:

receivables, BPO, or L/C financing from a bank,

discounting or dynamic discounting from the buyer, or

factoring from a third party.

This is a traditional supply chain finance definition and these are, with the exception of the new SWIFT BPO, the traditional mechanisms, so the guide is good in this respect. And it also has a good discussion of risk. However, when it comes to a discussion of automation, it is pretty much limited to e-Invoicing and this is a problem. e-Invoicing is just the foundation — technology has to go beyond just e-Invoicing if SCF is going to not only take off but become a pillar of supply chain support. But that’s a topic for a future post.